N.E.O. - Thomas Dolby

Near Earth Object

A solid body whose orbit lies within the orbit of Mars

Moons, asteroids, meteorites

And human debris

You can see a meteorite almost any night

Go out to the desert

You might find a piece

They are pieces of stars

Same as you and me

They have travelled through space for thousands of years

Perhaps you will get lucky

But you will never find a piece of Soyuz

Or Sputnik or Apollo 9

They are still out there

They are very faint

And the pollution in earths atmosphere

Washes out their pale light

Floating without air, without light

Or else — charred on the re-entry

They are still out there floating

Within the orbit of Mars

Look at it this way

A river of space, a ribbon of time

Like a burial by a bureaucrat

Undercover of a cold war risk

A cloud of dust, a cloud of rubble

Spinning in space on the heels of the Hubble

A parallel, or a temporal rip

On the belly of the Cosmos

Somewhere in a hanger

A fossilized finger

Stored by the government, hidden from the press

Some young top gun’s first solo

Turned out to be a N.E.O